New Statesman marks centenary with 180-page issue: 'No longer on life support but returning to robust health'

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The New Statesman is marking its centenary next week with a 180-page souvenir issue.

Contributors for what the NS says is its largest ever single issue will include: Julian Barnes, A S Byatt, David Hare, Mark Mazower, Melvyn Bragg, Michael Gove, David Miliband and Robert Skidelsky. There will also be reprints of classic articles by T S Eliot, George Orwell and others.

The NS now claims a total subscription base (include digital) of nearly 30,000 and says it had 1.4m unique website visitors in March.

Editor since 2008 Jason Cowley said: “The New Statesman is no longer on life support and is returning to robust health.

“I’m confident that it is now the best written and most intellectually stimulating magazine in Britain. We have rethought it and relaunched the website.

“We have broadened our political range and collaborated with some interesting and unexpected people. We have drawn influence from our Fabian tradition but also from Keynesian Liberalism – it is often forgotten that in 1931 the New Statesman merged with the Nation, the old voice of Bloomsbury social liberalism.

“The centenary issue will be full of great journalism and cultural criticism in the best tradition of the magazine. We will be looking back but we’ll also be asking what the next 100 years might bring in politics, public life and culture. Whatever that is, we are now confident that the New Statesman will be here to engage with it, online and on paper.”

On Thursday, 18 April, the NS is holding a debate at King’s College London with the title: “This house believes the left won the 20th century”, which will feature Simon Heffer, Mehdi Hasan, Helen Lewis, Tim Montgomerie, Owen Jones and Ruth Porter.

The New Statesman Century, a 300-page special edition of the magazine showcasing the “most incisive, influential and amusing articles” from the New Statesman archive, will be published in the summer with a book to follow.

Press Gazette, like New Statesman, is part of the Progressive Media group.